New Zealand policy interest rate
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand's policy interest rate, set by the Monetary Policy Committee under the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 2021 and the Monetary Policy Remit.
| Current value | 2.5 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-07-09 |
| Official source | Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Te Putea Matua), Monetary Policy Review of 8 July 2026 — OCR increased 25bp to 2.50%; 'Past monetary policy decisions' official OCR timeline, page last updated 08 July 2026 |
| Last verified | 2026-07-20 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
The Monetary Policy Committee raised the OCR from 2.25% to 2.50% at the 8 July 2026 Monetary Policy Review (RBNZ release 'OCR increased to 2.50% to return inflation to 2%'; decision reached by consensus). The new rate applies from the following business day (9 July 2026), which is why effective_from is 2026-07-09 rather than the announcement date. This was the first increase since May 2023, ending an easing cycle that had run from August 2024 (5.50%) to the November 2025 low of 2.25%. Note the RBNZ OCR path is not monotonic in this period: the 8 October 2025 review set 2.50%, the 26 November 2025 Monetary Policy Statement cut to 2.25%, and 2.25% was then held through February, April and May 2026 before the July 2026 hike back to 2.50%. The MPC reviews the OCR eight times a year; four of those reviews are accompanied by a full Monetary Policy Statement (Feb, May, Aug, Nov). ACCESS QUIRK: rbnz.govt.nz returns HTTP 403 to plain server-side fetchers and curl regardless of user-agent; the value here was read from a real headless-browser render of the official decisions page, which also emits a 'browser issue' banner. Plan for JS/bot-gated access on re-verification.
Earlier values
Get it programmatically
curl https://ausref.dev/v1/nz/policy-rate
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://ausref.dev/v1/nz/policy-rate/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/nz/policy-rateOther New Zealand series: VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates